


Best Served Cold

by the_random_writer



Category: Cut & Run - Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
Genre: Bookstores, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Gen, Phone Calls & Telephones, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-10-10 18:16:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10444116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_random_writer/pseuds/the_random_writer
Summary: Clancy has to deal with an unusual problem; a problem that leads straight back to one B. Tyler Grady.This story is a direct sequel toBookstore Battles. It includes a reference to a real person, but in a purely fictional way. I know what I've written isn't true, and no offense is intended.





	

Someone knocked on her office door; Michelle heaved a sigh and frowned.

Her 'me-time' hour was almost done, but she thought she'd made it abundantly clear she didn't want to be interrupted unless the universe was about to end. She should have known better than to think the country's terrorists and bad guys could give her a single hour.

An agent's work was never done.

"Come in!" she called out through the door.

The door swung open just enough for Agent Navarro to stick her head in. She flashed her boss a timid smile. "I know you said you didn't want to be interrupted, but there's a woman on the phone asking for you."

"Take her name and number, tell her I'll call her back," was Clancy's slightly dismissive reply. "Or better yet, get someone in the pool to deal with her. Sean's been complaining about the lack of interesting work. Put him on it."

Navarro sighed. "We've tried that, but she's refusing to talk to anyone else, so she keeps hanging up and calling back in. She's driving Fred and Harry nuts."

"How many times has she called?"

Navarro checked her notes. "Sixteen," she said.

" _Sixteen_?" Michelle repeated. "Jesus, she's persistent."

"She _did_ say it was extremely important."

"She tell you what it's about?"

Navarro shook her head. "We've asked, but she won't say."

Michelle scanned her paperwork again. There was nothing in her inbox right now that needed to be finished today. She could take ten or fifteen minutes to deal with a single call.

How much work could it possibly be?

"She on hold?"

Navarro nodded. "Line six."

"Thanks, Carmen. You can leave this with me. Tell the rest of the team I'll handle it from here."

The younger woman smiled, relieved to be rid of an irritation, and retreated as smoothly as she'd arrived.

Clancy pulled her phone towards her, opened a call and activated the hands-free mode. "Let's find out what the hell this is all about," she muttered as she pressed the button to pick up the line.

"Hello!" a demanding female voice rang out. "Is someone there?"

"Good morning, ma'am, this is Special Agent Michelle Clancy. I understand there's something important you want to talk to me about?"

The woman huffed. "Well, it's about time! You people have been giving me the run-around for almost an hour!"

"Sorry for the delay, ma'am. I've been stuck in meetings for most of the day," Michelle calmly lied. "But I'm here now, so what can I do for you?"

"I'd like to submit an official complaint about the Monday List," the woman declared.

"I'm sorry, the _what_?"

"The Monday List," the woman repeated.

"Ma'am, I'm afraid I have absolutely no idea what that is."

"You can drop the act with me, Miss Clancy," the woman tetchily advised. "I know what the Monday List is. You don't need to play dumb."

Michelle suppressed her insta-snark response. "Just for my benefit, ma'am," she began, the embodiment of cooperation, "why don't you tell me what you know about the Monday List?"

"It's the list of funny books that bookstores in Maryland aren't allowed to sell to people who work on Mondays."

_What the fucking fuck?_

"And, uh, this is a matter for the FBI, _how_?" was what Michelle actually asked.

The woman tutted, obviously not impressed. "Because the FBI arrests the people who break the rule!"

Michelle leaned back in her chair, squeezed her eyes shut and for the next five seconds, went to her happy place. When she spoke again, her voice was abnormally calm. "Ma'am, I have to ask, who told you about the Monday List?"

"I really shouldn't say. I don't want to get him into trouble."

"It's okay, ma'am," Michelle soothed. "I give you my word you won't be getting anybody into trouble."

The woman sighed, thinking the consequences through. Eventually she said, "It was the man at the bookstore in Fell's Point. He told me if he sold me a particular book, you would arrest him by the end of the day."

Clancy furrowed her brows. The bookstore in Fell's Point. Why did that ring a bell?

The penny dropped.

"Grady," she growled, clenching her fingers into fists. "You _asshole_."

" _What_ did you just say?"

"Sorry, ma'am," Michelle hastily added. "I wasn't referring to you."

The woman laughed, but it wasn't a pleasant sound. "I should hope not!"

"Ma'am, by any chance, was the bookstore in question called Brick and Mortar?" Michelle asked.

"Yes, that's the one."

"And the man you spoke to, tall, good-looking, brown hair, hazel eyes, West Virginian accent?"

The woman snorted. "Well, he wasn't _my_ idea of good-looking, but yes, that was him."

"And he told you he couldn't sell you a book?"

"Yes."

"Because it was on some kind of FBI watch list."

"The Monday List, yes."

"And what _was_ the book you were trying to buy?" Michelle enquired, hoping the answer would shed some light on her ex-colleague's eccentric behaviour. The man was as mad as a bag of weasels on crack, but as a general rule, his madness usually had some method behind it.

 _Usually_.

"I don't know," the woman revealed.

Brows gently furrowed again. "Uh, ma'am, what do you mean, you _don't know_?"

"I already explained this to the man at the store. I only saw the book for a couple of seconds, so I don't know who wrote it, and I have no idea what it's called."

Michelle propped her elbows on her desk and carefully laid her head in her hands. 

Jesus Christ. She understood Ty's actions, now. The woman must have driven him round the bend to the point where he'd actually started to play with his food. She'd seen him do it here in the office, usually with the guys from IA, and it wasn't pretty. Funny as hell, but not pretty.

And why on earth had he dragged _her_ into his little game? She was still pissed at his other half for the shooting business in Miami, and now _this_?

She turned her attention to the caller again. "Ma'am, I'm afraid you've been the victim of an extremely elaborate practical joke. There's no such thing as the Monday List. You can buy whatever book you want."

Within certain limits, of course. The woman might not want to order a copy of _The Anarchist's Cookbook_ anytime soon. That would _definitely_ put her on a list, and _not_ in a good way.

The woman clucked her tongue. "I must say, I'm _very_ disappointed to hear you say that."

"I understand ma'am. Nobody likes to be on the receiving end of a practical joke."

"That's not what I meant."

"Oh?"

"I'm disappointed you don't have the guts to admit to me that the list exists. Your poor father's probably rolling in his grave."

"Ma'am, my father's alive and well and living in Phoenix."

The woman sighed. "No, dear. I mean your _real_ father."

"My _real_ father?"

"Yes, dear. The author, Tom Clancy."

Michelle pinched the bridge of her nose. "The man at the bookstore told you that, didn't he?" she quietly asked. She was going to kick Grady's sorry, joke-playing ass from one end of Baltimore to the other.

"Yes, he did," the woman replied. "But he also told me it's not public knowledge, so I shouldn't mention it to anyone I don't trust."

Scratch that. She wasn't going to kick his ass. She was going to drug him, gag him, strip him naked, then stake him to a fire ant nest with honey smeared all over his balls.

"Ma'am, I want you to listen very closely to what I'm about to say, because I'm only going to say it once. And once I've said it, I'm going to hang up, and you will never, _ever_ phone me or this office again. Do you understand?"

"Of course," the woman curtly replied.

"Ma'am, there is no such thing as the Monday List. You can buy whatever book you want, funny or otherwise. The FBI will _not_ arrest anyone for selling a book to you. And I am _not_ Tom Clancy's daughter. Are we clear?"

"Yes, but—,"

"No buts, ma'am," Michelle thundered. " _Are we clear_?"

"Yes."

"Good. You enjoy the rest of your day."

She pressed the button to hang up the call. But she wasn't done with the matter yet. 

She logged back into her desktop computer and ran a quick Google search for Brick and Mortar books. Ten seconds later, she was stabbing the number into her phone.

Zane picked up on the fourth ring. "Brick and Mortar books," he politely announced. "How can I help you?"

"You can start by telling that _asshole_ husband of yours he's a dead man walking," Clancy almost snarled.

Silence at the other end.

"Red, is that you?" Garrett asked.

"Yes, it's me."

"Oh, God," Zane said with a groan. "What did he do now?"

"He didn't tell you about the fun he's been having with something called the Monday List?"

"The _what_?"

So Garrett at least was innocent, then.

"Go ask your other half what I'm talking about. Then go spend the rest of the day in the sack. Because by the time I'm done with him, he's gonna have no functioning body parts left!"

Zane sighed. "Bad?"

"Very."

"How about you come by on your day off, take him out back for twenty minutes and beat the shit out of him as well as you can?" was the Texan's counter-proposal. "Would that help?"

"Yeah, as long as you don't get in the way."

Zane snorted. "You ask me nicely, I'll hold him down."

"You got trouble in paradise, Garrett?"

"Not at all. Two of us are as happy as a pair of pigs in shit. It's just that Ty can sometimes be a little bit..." he trailed off, not quite able to put his feelings into words.

"A little bit Ty-ish?" Michelle supplied.

Zane laughed, obviously pleased another person understood. "Ty-ish, yeah. That's a good way to put it."

"That's a nice sound, Garrett," she said in a softer tone.

"What is?"

"You laughing," Michelle explained. "You didn't do it a lot when you were on the job."

"Didn't have much reason to do it when I was on the job," Zane pointed out. "Life's a bit easier now, less complicated."

"More books, less bullets?"

" _Fewer_ bullets," Zane corrected.

Michelle huffed. Goddamn smartass grammar pedants. "How about I put one of those bullets between your shit-stirring husband's balls?"

"Not sure I'd like that. I'm actually quite fond of his balls."

"But you _will_ let me beat the shit out of him, right?"

"He's all yours," Zane replied. "But you might want to bring a couple of friends with you. Ty _is_ an ex-Recon marine, remember. Beating the shit out of him can sometimes be a bit of a challenge."

"Could bring Fred and Harry with me," Michelle suggested. "We haven't seen the store since opening day. You could give us a tour, maybe have a catch-up over a coffee and a slice of cake?"

"Works for us if it works for you."

"And _then_ I beat the shit out of Ty."

"And _then_ you beat the shit out of Ty," Zane confirmed. "Oh, and I'd buy him something savoury instead of a slice of cake. Sugar'll give him an energy rush, but a carb overload'll slow him down."

"Good to know. Wednesday work?"

"Sure. Catherine comes in at noon, so we won't have a staffing problem if Ty's too busy bleeding out of his ears to come back to the front desk."

"Great! See you then."

"Looking forward to it. The catch-up _and_ the epic beating."

Clancy snickered. Then she remembered something else. "Oh, and Garrett?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't assume you're off the hook," she warned. "I still owe you a serious beating as well for what you did to me down in Miami."

Zane laughed again. "You can give me a good beating anytime, Red," was his teasingly salacious reply.

Clancy grunted and rolled her eyes. "You keep talking like that, Garrett, I'm gonna add your store to the database of suspected meeting locations for terrorist cells. See how smart you feel when Homeland Security's kicking down your front door."

On her computer, a calendar notification binged. 

"Team meeting time, so gotta run," she said to Zane. "See you Wednesday. Not a word to Grady, though, okay?"

"My lips are sealed," Zane gallantly said. "Talk soon, take care."

The line went dead.

Jesus, what a fucking day. Not _quite_ the weirdest day she'd had in her ten years with the FBI, but it was getting close.

When the caller had mentioned her famous, spy-novel-writing relation, she'd just about lost her cool. She'd obviously made a big mistake in sharing that interesting piece of family information with Ty—something else she would keep in mind when she was handing his punishment down.

On second thoughts, maybe she was being too harsh. Maybe he'd completely forgotten she'd even told him, and had simply plucked the Clancy connection out of his (extremely creative) ass. Her father's late cousin had been a Baltimore man to his bones, and his fame had made him a big name around town, especially to people who loved baseball and books.

She felt kind of bad that she'd never read a single one of his novels.

Hmm.

Maybe she should pick up a few at Brick and Mortar once her business with Grady was done?


End file.
